Citizen Spy Net Won't Take Flight

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's Operation TIPS program, which would have enlisted tens of thousands of truckers, bus drivers and other workers as citizen spies, was doomed before it began.

The Homeland Security package approved by the Senate last week and signed Monday by President Bush includes language explicitly prohibiting the government from implementing the controversial initiative. It was hounded by criticism from civil libertarians and targeted for elimination by key legislators.

The ill-fated program was first announced by Bush in March as part of a package of "Citizen Corps" initiatives aimed at getting American civilians involved in fighting terrorism.

But as details began to leak out, parties as divergent as the American Civil Liberties Union and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Tex., rallied to condemn the effort. They argued it would encourage citizens to snoop while doing little to safeguard the nation.

The initiative quickly became a public relations disaster for Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other Bush administration officials. It served as a symbol for anti-terrorism policies that many Democrats and civil liberties groups considered heavy-handed.

"This program epitomized the government's insatiable appetite for surveillance of law-abiding citizens," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington office. "Too many people thought that the government's anti-terrorism policies wouldn't have an impact on their lives, but this showed that they would."

TIPS -- the Terrorism Information and Prevention System -- was envisioned as a "national system for reporting suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity" involving "millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places," according to a description posted last summer on the Justice Department's Web site.

The ACLU and other groups, alarmed by the possibility that utility workers or delivery drivers might be enlisted to spy on customers, said the program was akin to creating "government-sanctioned Peeping Toms."